“Come on.” As Riley led the way out of the armory, he gave his quickest class yet on the Ml6: “This is the safety. It’s on right now. If you want to fire, you push it to semi. Then you aim and pull the trigger. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” Riley kicked open the door to unit A2.
“What are we doing here?” Lallo asked nervously.
“We’re going to destroy the PAL codes and instructions for the bombs. Keep an eye on the corridor.”
Riley knelt down and laid out the explosives before him. As he was unwinding the fuse the sharp crack of an explosion roared through the base. Riley dropped the explosives and grabbed his Ml6. He’d run out of time.
Pak was the first to leap over the door. Kim’s charges had blown the door off its hinges and into the top of the stairwell. Weapon first, Pak sidled down the stairs, his men right behind, the muzzles of their weapons searching every corner.
Stopping short of the first intersection, Pak deployed his men in two-man teams. He’d gotten a sketch of the layout of the base with the OPLAN, so he had an idea of where he was and what lay ahead. He signaled for two teams to head down the east tunnel, clearing in that direction; he would take the rest directly to A2 to secure the codes and then to Al for the bombs.
As the first two men stepped forward into the intersection, a burst of automatic fire ripped into them, slamming both to the floor. Pak slid the muzzle of his AK-47 around the corner and blindly fired a magazine in that direction as Kim pulled one of the men back under cover. The other lay motionless in the center of the intersection.
“Smoke,” Pak ordered.
Lee took a grenade off his combat vest, pulled the pin, and threw it into the north tunnel. Bright red smoke immediately billowed out and filled the corridor.
“Go,” Pak ordered, gesturing his instructions.
Two men stepped out into the corridor and moved slowly forward, while two more sprinted down the corridor to loop around and catch whoever had done the firing from the flank.
Riley was sure he’d hit two of them. All he’d seen were two men bundled up in dark-colored clothes. He and Lallo were just to the south of the intersection of the north and west tunnels, using the corner of B2 to protect themselves.
He gave the smoke enough time to completely fill the corridor and then pulled the trigger, emptying eighteen rounds into the fog. As he smoothly switched magazines, his answer was dozens of rounds of return fire ricocheting off the walls.
“They’re going to try and flank us,” Riley whispered to Lallo. “Let’s go.”
Weapon ready at his waist, Riley moved into the smoke-filled corridor, heading for the door on the north end of B2. He opened it, and just as he slid in, he spotted two figures out of the corner of his eye.
He quietly shut the door behind Lallo as the two men passed by, moving toward their old location.
Riley made his way through the mess hall to the far door. Were the flankers already around, or were they right in front of the door? Screw it, Riley thought. He swung the door open and stepped out. No one.
He opened the door to C2 and hustled Lallo through, then across into the south tunnel. As they moved out into that hallway, Riley could hear voices behind them, yelling in a foreign tongue. He recognized the language with a quiet chill — Han Gul, Korean.
“All right.” He leaned against the outside wall of the library. Lallo was looking at him with large eyes; the knuckles on the hands gripping the M16 were turning white. Riley whispered his plan. “We have to cross and get into the generator room. If these guys have their shit together, they’ve left someone overwatching the east tunnel.
“We go together — you on the right, me on the left. If there’s someone there, I’m going to fire. You keep going no matter what. If I don’t make it, go to the access tunnel to the left of the control panel. Crawl down it until you come to the first hatch. Devlin should be on the other side. Call out and have him open it, then go in and make sure you seal that hatch and the next one. Do you understand?”
Lallo nodded.
“Ready? GO!”
Riley stepped out, weapon tight in against his shoulder, aiming up the tunnel. He and the two Koreans at the other end fired simultaneously. Riley could sense — whether it was by sound or feel, he couldn’t quite say — bullets passing by him.
In the second and a half it took to cross the corridor, he had emptied his magazine, as had the two men. Miraculously, Riley was untouched. He slid into the safety of unit C3.
The scream that tore through the air informed him that Lallo hadn’t been as fortunate. Riley spun around. The cameraman was lying in the middle of the tunnel, hands grasping his left leg, blood pouring over his fingers. His M16 lay on the floor, forgotten.
Even as Riley started to move out to pull him to safety, a burst of automatic fire walked up the floor, sending chips of wood flying. The rounds stitched a pattern across Lallo’s midsection, the velocity of the rounds punching him three feet down the south tunnel where he came to rest, dead.
Riley turned and ran through the door to the power plant, hoping the Koreans would move cautiously down the corridor. He slid into the power access tunnel. There was no way he could replace the grate from the inside, so there would be little doubt about which direction he had gone. He’d have to trust the strength of the double hatches.
He crawled the distance to the first hatch and pounded on it. “It’s me, Riley.” The wheel slowly turned and the door opened. Riley slid through, pushing past Sammy. “Shut it.”
“Where’s Lallo?”
“Dead.” Riley slumped against the corrugated steel tubing that made up the wall. “Secure it.”
Sammy flipped over the latch, locking the handle.
Riley looked around the tunnel and pulled off one of the green bags he had draped over his shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“They blew in the door to the shaft, so they can probably blow this one too. I want to leave them a little surprise.”
Captain Lim craned his neck, looking out the window. They had just cleared the last mountains and broken into an intermittent cloud cover, leaving the storm behind. The sea of ice that surrounded Antarctica was spread out below as far as he could see to the north. There was no way he could land on that.
“We must turn back and try landing on the ice cap!” he pleaded with the impassive Sergeant Chong. “We are almost out of fuel.”
Chong fingered his slung AK-47 and took a deep breath, held it, and pulled the trigger. The first round blew the copilot’s brains against the right windshield, smearing it with red globules.
“What are you doing?!” Lim screamed, twisting in his seat, his eyes growing wide as the gaping muzzle of the AK-47 turned toward him. “If you kill me there will be no one to fly the plane!”
Chong’s finger increased pressure on the trigger.
“Please!” Lim begged.
Chong shot him through the chest three times, the third round blowing the pilot out of the seat. Without hands on the controls, the plane continued to glide forward smoothly. Chong reached over Lim’s body and pushed down on the yoke. The nose of the plane turned downward.
When the angle got too steep, the plane plummeted out of control toward the ice-covered water. The nose hit first. The rest of the plane crumpled and compressed as it punched through the ice into the freezing saltwater below.
In five minutes a black smear on the ice was all that was left to mark the grave of the IL-18.
Pak looked at the unprimed C-4 lying in front of the untouched safe and frowned. Someone in the news party had been very smart but not quick enough.